WEST, Robert

Regularly referred to as a ‘gentleman’, and even occasionally as an ‘esquire’ later in his career,4 CP40/738, rot. 466d; 779, rot. 375; 780, rot. 375; CPR, 1452-61, p. 185; Muns. Berkeley Castle, ii. 950; Wilts. Hist. Centre, Suff. and Berks. mss, 88/1/12; C140/30/50; KB9/320/4. Robert was probably a lawyer like his father. If so, he was perhaps the Robert West of Barnard’s Inn, an inn of Chancery, sued at Westminster in 1449.5 Baker, 1651. If not a lawyer, it is hard to see to what he owed his gentry status, for he was found to hold real property worth just £12 p.a. when assessed for the subsidy of 1451. Aside from land at Malmesbury and the nearby hamlet of Thornhill, the location of these holdings is unrecorded, although it is likely that most lay in Brokenborough, just to the north-west of the town he represented in at least two Parliaments. Brokenborough was his father’s place of residence and he himself was also sometimes referred to as of that parish. At the beginning of 1461 West conveyed certain lands in Long Newnton, also immediately to the north-west of Malmesbury, to William Everard of Tetbury, Gloucestershire, but it is unclear whether his interest in these lands (once the property of William Coke) was that of an owner or feoffee.6 E179/196/118; VCH Wilts. xiv. 31; KB27/715, rot. 559d; 775, rot. 8d; CP40/779, rot. 375; 780, rot. 375; Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle, ii. 950. Lawyer or not, it is possible that West had mercantile interests. In May 1437, for example, the Crown issued a licence to ship cloth from Chichester to Robert West and John Cutbert. If the identity of Cutbert’s associate is not established, it was certainly the MP who was pardoned his outlawry in February 1455, for failing to answer a suit for debt that the Bristol merchant, Henry May, had brought against him at Westminster. In his suit, May had claimed that West, referred to in the pardon as ‘late of Malmesbury’, owed him nearly ten marks.7 CPR, 1436-41, p. 59; 1452-61, p. 185.

The first known reference to West is the record of a previous lawsuit that he and his father brought in the common pleas against a tanner, William Strut, in Trinity term 1435: they alleged that Strut had forcibly entered on to a close of theirs at Malmesbury. The Wests sued in person, so perhaps Robert was pursuing a legal education in London by that date. Four years later, he joined (Sir) John Stourton II* and William Darell* in suing Strut and his wife, likewise in the common pleas and again for breaking into closes at Malmesbury. During 1445 Robert was both a defendant and a plaintiff in separate cases brought before the same court. First, John Long* sued him for seizing, imprisoning and ill-treating him at Malmesbury, but the only known evidence relating to this case does not reveal the exact circumstances behind it or its outcome. Secondly, he was associated with John Dewall* and others as a co-plaintiff in an action concerning property just outside the town.8 CP40/698, rot. 193; 715, rot. 559d; 738, rot. 466d; 739, rot. 437. West was again a defendant in the common pleas a decade later, this time in suits for trespass and debt that Sir Edmund Hungerford* had brought against him. His co-defendant in one of these suits was Stephen West, ‘late of Brokenborough, servant’, presumably a dependant relative. West’s differences with Hungerford were probably no more than temporary, since in 1460 he witnessed a conveyance from the knight’s former ward, John Thorpe, to George Howton*. Like Thorpe, Howton had a close connexion with Hungerford since he was one of the latter’s retainers, as possibly was West.9 KB27/775, rot. 8d; CP40/779, rot. 375; 780, rot. 375; 781, rot. 157; CCR, 1454-61, p. 487. A few years later, Robert was party to another conveyance in which he was associated with none other than Edward IV’s brother, the young George, duke of Clarence. Dated 1465, the conveyance was made by John Borne of Malmesbury, who transferred various lands in the town and its environs to Clarence, Humphrey Stafford IV*, Lord Stafford, John Wroughton*, Henry* and John Long and others, including West.10 Suff. and Berks. mss, 88/1/12. The purpose of this transaction is not known although possibly the grantees were Borne’s feoffees.

Whatever the purpose of Borne’s conveyance, Robert was one of the least distinguished of his grantees. The loss of Malmesbury’s records makes it impossible to ascertain whether he served in the administration of the borough, but at a county level he was of little significance as an office-holder, receiving a single ad hoc commission as a tax collector and an appointment as verderer of the royal forest of Braydon. During the 1450s and 1460s, however, he was summoned for jury service at various sessions of oyer and terminer in Wiltshire, some of which dealt with highly important matters. In July 1452 he was a juror when the duke of Somerset and other justices sat at Malmesbury, primarily to take indictments for the murder in Wiltshire of Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury at the time of Cade’s rebellion. He was also one of the jurors at the Salisbury sessions of January 1469, at which (Sir) Thomas Hungerford* (great-nephew of Sir Edmund) and his ally and distant kinsman, Henry Courtenay, the dispossessed heir to the earldom of Devon, were tried for treason before Richard, duke of Gloucester. The defendants were swiftly executed after West and his fellow jurors had convicted them of having plotted at Salisbury to overthrow Edward IV. West also served as a juror at Wiltshire inquisitions post mortem. In June 1459 he was on the panel summoned following the death of Thomas Hungerford’s grandfather Robert, Lord Hungerford, as he was at the inquisitions held for Joan, Lady Lovell, in July 1467 and for Edmund Blount in October 1468.11 KB9/134/1, mm. 14, 32; 134/2, mm. 14, 149; 135, m. 18; 320, m. 4; PROME, xv. 164-8; C139/172/17; C140/19/20; 30/50.

For lack of evidence to the contrary, there is little doubt that West’s most important public office was that of an MP. While his parliamentary career was far less extensive than that of his father, it is conceivable that the Parliament of 1449 was not his first since the names of Malmesbury’s MPs of 1439 and 1445 have not survived. Just before taking up his seat in 1449, he witnessed the election of the knights of the shire for Wiltshire to the same assembly. By that date it is likely that he had taken part in previous parliamentary elections for Malmesbury. While this is impossible to prove, owing to the loss of almost all of the medieval borough’s election indentures, he is known to have stood surety for John Nicoll III*, one of the town’s MPs of 1447,12 C219/15/4. suggesting that he also attested the return of Nicoll and Thomas Hasard* to the Parliament of that year. It was alongside Nicoll that West was elected to his second known Parliament more than 12 years later.13 Although this second Parl., that of 1459, was one of the most ‘Lancastrian’ of Hen. VI’s reign, it is impossible to prove that the MP was the Robert West who had became bailiff of Enfield, Mdx., for Queen Margaret at Mich. 1447: SC6/1093/14.

Not heard of after 1469, West may have died soon afterwards. His heir is not known but the John West of Brokenborough, ‘gentleman’, who in 1504 stood surety for Anne, widow of Christopher Tropenell, was evidently a close relative if not his son. It was perhaps this John who died in 1514 seised of lands in Malmesbury, Broad Town, Sherston and elsewhere in Wiltshire valued at just over £11 p.a. in his inquisition post mortem. His heir was his son and namesake, then a boy of some seven years of age. Curiously the inquisition does not refer to any holdings at Brokenborough, even though the Wests are known to have retained an interest in that parish until or perhaps beyond 1550-1 when Henry West sold some 180 acres there to William Stumpe†.14 CCR, 1500-9, no. 314; C142/78/118; VCH Wilts. xiv. 31.